Kleinzeit

Nonsense

‘Guess who’s in hospital,’ said Sister to Kleinzeit.

HOSPITAL, HOSPITAL, HOSPITAL, yelled the echo in Kleinzeit’s skull. ‘Redbeard,’ he said.

‘Right,’ said Sister. ‘Slipped fulcrum.’

‘I don’t want to know the details,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘How’s Schwarzgang?’

‘Still blipping.’

‘He’ll outlive the lot of us,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What sort of shape is Redbeard in?’

‘You know how it is with a slipped fulcrum,’ said Sister. ‘No leverage?’

‘Right, and he’s completely lost his appetite as well. We’ve had to hook him up to a drip-feed.’

‘Maybe I’ll go see him,’ said Kleinzeit. After supper when it was time for Sister to go on duty he went to the hospital with her.

SWEETHEART! roared Hospital when he walked in. IT’S SO GOOD TO HAVE YOU BACK! WAS UMS NAUGHTY, DID UMS RUN AWAY, PRECIOUS? ALL IS FORGIVEN. UMMMMM-MMMNHH! It gave him a big wet kiss. Kleinzeit wiped off the kiss.

Redbeard was in the same bed Kleinzeit had had, the one by the window. Braced by a complex metal framework with pulleys and counterweights he was sitting up and looking at the tube attached to his arm. When Kleinzeit appeared he looked hard at him. ‘Any luck?’ he said.

‘With what?’ said Kleinzeit.

‘You know,’ said Redbeard.

‘Paragraph so far,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

Redbeard raised his eyebrows, whistled. ‘ “Paragraph so far,”’ he repeated. ‘You’re doing paragraphs, pages, chapters — the lot?’

Kleinzeit nodded, shrugged, looked away.

Redbeard chuckled like a broken clock. ‘I gave you the bare room,’ he said. ‘For better or worse.’

‘Thank you,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘for better or worse.’

‘Don’t think I kept any of the money I got for your things,’ said Redbeard. ‘Spent it as fast as I could. Drink, women, etcetera. Nothing to show for it, absolutely pure spending, you know. Only way to do it.’

‘Quite,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘You’ll notice,’ said Redbeard, ‘what ward they’ve put me in.’

‘A4,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘Right,’ said Redbeard. ‘It all fits, eh?’

‘Nonsense,’ said Kleinzeit faintly.

‘Not nonsense,’ said Redbeard. ‘How do we know they’re not all yellow-paper men here? No use asking, of course. They’d never admit it. I’d never admit it if you didn’t already know. Tell you something.’ He motioned Kleinzeit closer.

‘What?’ said Kleinzeit.

‘The reason I used to drop yellow paper,’ said Redbeard. The way he said yellow paper made it sound a proper name, as if there were someone called Yellow Paper who had legs to walk about with. ‘I didn’t quite tell you the whole truth. Maybe when I started it was the way I told you it was. But after a while I was dropping it to see if I could put it on to someone else, get it off me, you know. Hoped it would give over, let me off.’

‘Did it?’

‘You see what it’s done. First it tried to drown me. Now it’s put me in hospital.’

‘How’d you slip your fulcrum?’

‘While I was spending your money. That’s how it goes. Excess brings its own moderation.’ He looked at the tube in his arm, looked at the hanging bottle, made swallowing motions as if his throat was very dry. ‘I’m scared,’ he said.

‘Who isn’t,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Morton Taylor is rife.’

‘Still busking?’

‘Yes.’

‘Going like a bomb, I bet. That girl’s a gold mine.’

‘Doing it alone,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘Broken up already?’

‘No, I just want to do it alone.’

‘How’re you doing then?’

‘Pretty well. £4.75 today, and I knocked off early. I sell poems too, tell fortunes as well.’

Redbeard whistled again. ‘That’s the ticket,’ he said. ‘You’re a winner all right. You’ll do it.’

‘Do what?’ said Kleinzeit.

Redbeard motioned him closer again. ‘Maybe you think all this is off to one side, sort of. Not the real thing.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well,’ said Redbeard, ‘you had a job and all, didn’t you. Had some kind of a straight life going.’

‘Yes.’

‘Maybe you think the busking and the yellow paper and the bare room and so forth don’t count. Maybe you think you can drop it all and put everything together the way it was.’

Why does he insist on naming everything, thought Kleinzeit. ‘See how it goes,’ he said.

‘Forget it,’ said Redbeard. ‘You can’t see how it goes. You’re in it now. This is it.’

‘Nothing is it,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Anything is whatever it happens to be at the time.’

‘No,’ said Redbeard, ‘this is it all right. It’s yellow paper and you now. Good luck.’

‘Thanks,’ said Kleinzeit, resisting an urge to tie a knot in Redbeard’s tube. ‘I’d better go now.’

He stopped at Schwarzgang’s bed. ‘How’s it going?’ he said.

‘It’s going, I’m going,’ said Schwarzgang. ‘What stays?’

‘Whole sentences now,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘You’re stronger than you were.’

‘Stronger, weaker,’ said Schwarzgang. ‘At my age there’s not a lot of difference. Actually I feel pretty good. They’re going to let me out for an afternoon next week.’

Kleinzeit took a piece of folded yellow paper out of his pocket so that Schwarzgang could see it, put it back again. No reaction from Schwarzgang. Of course it was nonsense, thought Kleinzeit. A ward of sick yellow-paper men!

‘You’re a writer?’ said Schwarzgang.

Kleinzeit shrugged, made a nothing-much gesture.

‘Published?’

‘No.’

‘At one time,’ said Schwarzgang, ‘I wrote a little. Nothing much.’

‘Yellow paper?’ said Kleinzeit. Out of the corner: of his eye he saw Redbeard listening.

‘Funny you should ask,’ said Schwarzgang. ‘As a matter of fact I did use yellow paper. That must have been what made me ask if you were a writer.’

‘Did anything,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘you know, happen?’

‘What should happen?’ said Schwarzgang. ‘A couple of chapters I still have in a box somewhere, that’s as far as it went. I’m a small businessman, a tobacconist, that’s all. It’s a living. The world is full of people who write a few chapters.’

‘On yellow paper,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘Yellow paper, blue paper, white. What’s the difference.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘See you.’ Redbeard was laughing silently in his bed.

Kleinzeit stopped at Piggle’s bed. He’d never had much to say to Piggle, but they’d smiled occasionally. ‘How are you?’ he said.

‘Pretty well, thanks,’ said Piggle. ‘Out in a fortnight, I should think.’

‘Good,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘Actually,’ said Piggle, ‘I wonder if you’d do me a favour?’

‘Certainly,’ said Kleinzeit.

Piggle took a scrap of yellow paper from the drawer of his bedside locker, wrote a telephone number on it. ‘They still won’t let me out of bed,’ he said. ‘Would you ring up my wife and ask her to bring Conrad’s The Secret Agent next time she comes? Here’s the 2p.’

Kleinzeit took the yellow paper carefully in his hand. Same kind.

‘Sure it’s quite all right?’ said Piggle. ‘You look a little odd. Oughtn’t to bother you with it, really.’

‘No, no,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘It’s all right.’ He could have picked it up anywhere, he thought. After all, they wouldn’t make yellow paper if it weren’t in general use. Maybe I should ask Ryman’s. Ask what? Don’t be silly. ‘All the best,’ he said to Piggle. ‘Cheerio.’

‘Cheerio,’ said Piggle. ‘Thanks for the phone call.’

‘It’s nothing at all,’ said Kleinzeit. He left the ward without talking to anyone else, said goodbye to Sister, hurried down the stairs with Hospital making lip-smacking noises after him, found himself in the Underground. He went to a telephone, stood in front of it with Mrs Piggle’s yellow-paper telephone number in his hand. Had Piggle meant anything by asking for that particular book? He dialled the number.

Ring, ring. ‘Hello,’ said Mrs Piggle.

‘Comrade here,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Secret agent.’

‘Who’s that?’ said Mrs Piggle.

‘This is Morton Taylor,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Mr Piggle asked me to ask you to bring a book next time you visit: The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad. Yellow paper.’

‘What do you mean, “yellow paper”?’ said Mrs Piggle.

‘Fellow patients is what I said,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I said we’d been fellow patients.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Piggle, ‘and that’s certainly a place where fellows have to be patient, isn’t it. Very difficult for Cyril, he wants to be up and doing.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Doing his …’

‘Work, you know,’ said Mrs Piggle.

‘Of course,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘At …’

‘The office,’ said Mrs Piggle. ‘Thank you so much for giving me the message, Mr Fellows.’

‘Taylor,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Yellow paper.’

‘Fellow patient,’ said Mrs Piggle. ‘Quite. Thank you so much. Goodbye.’

Fellow patient, thought Kleinzeit. Fellows patient. Patient fellows. Code? He went to the platform, got into a train, read Thucydides, came to one of the places where he’d opened the book at random before beginning to read it. Demosthenes was talking to the Athenians at Pylos as they waited for the Spartans to attack the beach:

‘ … I call upon you, as Athenians who know from experience all about landing from ships on foreign shores and how impossible it is to force a landing if the defenders stand firm and do not give way through fear of the surf or the frightening appearance of the ships as they sail in — remembering this, stand firm now yourselves, meet the enemy right down at the water’s edge, and preserve this position and our own lives.’

Yes, said Kleinzeit as he escalated to the street, that’s it all right: ‘the frightening appearance of the ships as they sail in.’ The pain was big and smooth and quiet now, like a Rolls-Royce. My place, said Kleinzeit, and they drove off.